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The Outlooks of the GPU Market During the Next Year Or So-ish

I got myself a nice system in February. It has an XFX 7950. It's been working nicely and is beefy enough to do what I need it to do, but there's two things: 1. it's loud as fuck and 2. there's this AMD micro-stuttering issue which I can't help noticing.

So I've been thinking that I should probably switch that to something else at some point during the next year-or-so.

What's the situation now, are there any major new developments in the market that I should know of, is there something to look forward to before even considering an upgrade? How are the new NVIDIA cards?

If it's a rattly/mechanical loudness (and there are no obstructions) I'd RMA it, and if it's just ramped up white noise I might consider better cooling in the case. Could be the cooler's not well-seated, but you'll probably void your warranty mucking with that.

Originally Posted by Velko

2. there's this AMD micro-stuttering issue which I can't help noticing.

Are you using the latest drivers? AMD's single-GPU frame consistency is either competitive or the best in the market right now iirc. Yeah, check this review out, and note on pages 4-8 the "99th Percentile frame time" and "time spent beyond x_ms" graphs, where the 7970 GHz is often better than the 770. Also note the handy switchable "99th percentile FPS per dollar" and "average FPS per dollar" graph on the conclusions page (7970 Ghz tops 770 in both measures, albeit marginally).

So I've been thinking that I should probably switch that to something else at some point during the next year-or-so.

What's the situation now, are there any major new developments in the market that I should know of, is there something to look forward to before even considering an upgrade? How are the new NVIDIA cards?

If you've ruled out poor ventilation and are still under warranty I'd consider getting it replaced. As the aforementioned review shows, the new 7970s are competitive with GeForce 770s. If you're just wanting speculation for the next round of AMD and NVIDIA cards: AMD will probably release Volcanic Islands GPUs by the end of this year and they should be good (they'll be Radeon 9xxx cards because the 8xxx series is just 7xxx cards rebadged for the OEM market). They may be a better value proposition than NVIDIA's offerings, at least until NVIDIA can respond on price (and barring preemptive SKUs from them). NVIDIA's Maxwell GPUs won't find consumers until 2014.

Yeah I think the noise issue is due to XFX being a bit crap. No rattling or anything, it's just that the fans are really really loud. Ventilation should be all right, after all this is a custom-built rig with emphasis on being as quiet as possible with a good case and good case fans (so why they chose that GPU then, I don't know: lesson here, kids, is that you should always build it yourself!).

I need to check that driver thing, thanks Jambe.

It looks indeed like the GTX7xx is nothing to fuss about at the moment.